US Secretary of State Colin Powell said President George W. Bush had not yet decided to attack Iraq to force it to abandon weapons of mass destruction.

"He hopes for a peaceful solution but at the same time we are taking prudent action, positioning our forces so that they will be ready to do whatever might be required," Powell said.

He spoke as US and British warplanes again attacked Iraqi radar sites in the southern 'no-fly' zone. A recent escalation in the number of such incidents has coincided with the US military build-up in the region.

More than 100 UN weapons inspectors are now in Iraq, but the 200 searches they have carried out since Nov. 27 have apparently uncovered no trace of the chemical, biological or nuclear weapons programs Washington insists Iraq is pursuing.

In a round of television appearances in Washington, Powell said the United States was now providing intelligence to UN inspectors in Iraq searching for signs of weapons programs and expected to see results soon.

"We'll see what they're able to come up with," Powell told CBS. "Saddam Hussein says he's not doing it, he's stopped it. Well, we'll establish whether or not that is the case. We do not believe he has stopped."

Democratic Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut said he also believed Saddam had weapons of mass destruction.

"They have more, I've seen it in the classified briefings," said Lieberman, a member of the US Senate Armed Services Committee.

Iraq, ordered by the UN Security Council last month to give a full account of any banned weapons programs or face serious consequences -- diplomatic language for possible war -- says it has no such weapons and no plans to produce them.

Last week the inspectors began interviewing Iraqi scientists who could shed light on Iraq's previous and any current weapons programs. Powell noted the Iraqis met the UN deadline to turn over a list of 500 scientists who have worked on various weapons programs but said the US intelligence community had not analyzed it.

Powell said Baghdad's cooperation with the inspectors was beginning to unravel.

MORE INTELLIGENCE TO INSPECTORS

"There's been some resistance in recent days to some of the things the inspectors are looking for," he told ABC. "And we are providing more information and intelligence to the inspectors to cue their visits. And we'll see whether that attitude of cooperation continues."

Washington has pressed the inspectors to conduct the interviews outside Iraq in the hope of obtaining crucial intelligence.

US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld ordered thousands of troops, dozens of strike aircraft and probably two aircraft carrier battle groups to the Gulf, starting early next month, for a possible war.

The deployment would at least double the 50,000 US military personnel already near Iraq.

US defense officials also confirmed that Saudi Arabia had agreed to let the United States use its air bases and an important operations center at Prince Sultan air base outside Riyadh for defensive purposes in any possible war with Iraq.

Ground attack jets would likely fly from elsewhere in the region, said the officials, who asked not to be identified.

The UN arms inspectors in Iraq visited an electronics company north of the capital, and an engineering company and administration office of the Iraqi customs service, both in Baghdad, Iraqi officials said.

They also searched a chemical engineering design center in the city that is involved in projects for chemical and petrochemical production facilities, a spokesman for the inspectors said.

Both the companies are run by the Military Industrialisation Commission in charge of state companies developing and producing civilian and military goods.

The US drive to focus attention on Iraq's alleged cover-up of banned weapons programs has been jolted by North Korea's recent admission it had a secret uranium enrichment project and its expulsion of inspectors from the UN nuclear agency.

But the Bush administration argues the situations in Iraq and North Korea cannot be compared, as Iraq has defied the United Nations for years and it cannot be sure North Korea is planning to use the nuclear facility for military purposes.

(China Daily December 30, 2002)